


After Anne

by RunSquidling



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, minor characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 08:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunSquidling/pseuds/RunSquidling
Summary: What happened to the girl who took over Buffy's LA life after "Anne"? (Not Angel compliant)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This character was always my fave, and I just needed to explore her, you know? Turns out her story was expanded on Angel but I never watched that show so consider this an alternate take.

Buffy sent a letter every month for six months. For the first four months she got a novel back, six pages of middle-school-level scraggly writing with many exclamation marks, half of them written in pink (she rolled her eyes at that, but Anne was happy, fed, sheltered, taking care of herself, and it didn’t really surprise Buffy that she hadn’t had much practice writing letters)—and then, nothing. And then, scrawled across the front in big, loopy, steady, practiced handwriting-

_ Recipient no longer at this residence. _

For two half-hearted weeks, Buffy looked for her, but the internet and the post office turned up nothing. At the end of the day, she had more important people to take care of.

-

Anne swore she was never going to join a cult again. And she didn’t, which was something of a miracle—every Jesus-peddler who came to her door, every charismatic smile with salvation on their lips, every one of them triggered this  _ longing  _ inside her, to be taken care of and safe and protected from the big-scary things in the world. But she said to herself  _ no  _ and put on her uniform and went to work and paid all her bills like a grown-up. She didn’t even have a boyfriend for four months. And the world didn’t implode.

And then, taxes.

She had all the sheets, she had her pink Biro, she had her pay stubs and her receipts and her W2, and she just couldn’t understand what to do. The words and numbers on the page meant nothing, and that was before she started crying—now she couldn’t see them at all. She held her pen above the box for her name, and couldn’t do it. That all-consuming familiar fear kept her pen above the box. Anne wasn’t her name, it was Buffy’s. She’d only borrowed it, and the government wouldn’t recognise her. They’d wonder: who is this? Maybe she’s illegal. Maybe she’s a fugitive. They woudn’t let that slide.

She didn’t know what happened to people who filed their taxes wrong. Or didn’t file them at all. Either way, the great, billowing fear told her that what happened was a  _ bad bad thing _ and she didn’t want to be here to find out.

She dropped the pink pen and left the building, walking the streets with her shoulders tucked around her ears, hoping a walk would make her feel better, but it didn’t. The sun rose—she was supposed to open today, at the restaurant, but she couldn’t bring herself to go home, put on her uniform. Be anywhere she was expected to be. 

What if they put her in jail?

What if it was worse than jail? Her imagination, not terribly broad, came up with nothing specific, but the sheer hugeness of the  _ badbadbad _ feeling kept her on the streets, wandering until mid-day. She tried to go home. She really did. But she couldn’t do it. 

She had been  _ running running running  _ her whole life. It was exhausting. But what could she do? These things kept happening, these important things that she had to do  _ or else _ but she didn’t understand, and if there was nobody there to protect her, what was she supposed to do?

It didn’t occur to her to write to Buffy. Asking for help wasn’t something  Anne Trillium knew how to do. She just ran, again—sneaked home in the middle of the night, grabbed her money and all the important things she could grab in the five minutes she had talked herself into believing was safe (cookies, her pillow, the shampoo she’d splurged on to fix her lifeless hair, and Buffy’s letters, always Buffy’s letters), hopped a cargo train, and went somewhere far away and much colder. She could try being a grown-up again after taxes were over, and maybe she’d figure out what to do by the end of next year. On the train, tucked between huge cardboard boxes in the dark, she curled around her backpack and wished she’d remembered to grab some clothes. And her toothbrush. And more food than just cookies.

She pulled one of Buffy’s letters out of her backpack. She couldn’t read it in the dark, but touching the paper made her feel better. When she got back on her feet she would write Buffy again, and she’d call herself Anne in the letter, so Buffy wouldn’t get confused. It would be nice to be Anne again. 

-

Years later, a confused postman stopped her truck at the edge of a massive crater, got out, and checked the address on the last envelope in her bag, written in big, blocky pink capitals. It definitely said  _ Sunnydale _ , and the map definitely marked Sunnydale as right here. She looked around for a single house—perhaps this was the smallest town in America, population 1? But nothing caught her eye, until a fallen sign just over the edge of the crater glinted in the sun. Carefully side-stepping to avoid slipping down the scree, she knelt beside the sign, and flipped it over.

“Well, this is definitely Sunnydale...” she said, looking out at the crater once again. It was a rather nice-looking desert, really, all scrub grasses and cactuses and the occational flutter of some kind of desert bird, but nothing resembling a human dwelling marked the entire expanse. 

See, if the letter had a return address, she would have just sent it back, no problem. But her boss had a problem with lost letters, and with her luck he would explode on her if she brought a big thick one like this back.

“Well, sorry, lady. Hope it wasn’t important,” she said, and tucked the letter under the sign. It was in Sunnydale. That was close enough.


End file.
